High-speed rail

Stopping the slow train

The Conservative party sweetened the gruel of its bitter economic message this week with a promise Labour should have made long ago - to build a high-speed rail network north from London. The party confirmed a second sensible decision too - to scrap plans for a third runway at Heathrow. Those wise choices may be spoilt by a third Tory proposal, from London's Conservative mayor, Boris Johnson, to relocate the capital's main airport to an artificial island in the Thames estuary, at unknown financial and environmental cost. But Mr Johnson's airport is a daydream, while plans for a new fast rail line are real; the problem is paying for it.

The Treasury has been frightened away from high-speed rail by the cost and by the fact that the taxpayer ended up underwriting the first fast link from London to the Channel tunnel, when the idea was that the private sector would pay. In operational terms that link has been a success, built on time and on budget. It is now quicker to travel by train from the capital to Brussels than to Manchester. No one doubts that a similar route could be extended north - roughly parallel to the overburdened existing west coast line. That line could then be handed over to local traffic and a greatly expanded freight service, taking much strain from the M1 and M6 roads. Unfortunately this week's flimsy Tory document skirts round the cost and makes debatable claims about the environmental and economic merits of the new line.

The Conservatives propose that the Treasury should offer up to £1.3bn a year over 12 years for land and track - as long as a private company builds the route and takes any risk beyond that. But the public funding would have to come from the existing rail budget, which is already under tremendous strain. Some might argue that the money would be better spent on commuter routes and existing long-distance lines, or even better bus services, rather than glossy rail rockets - which is why the government has opposed such a line up until now. But Britain's transport system is inadequate - slow, expensive and full. It needs a massive boost: the most essential thing about a fast line is not the speed, but the vast extra capacity it will provide.

The trouble is that these benefits will be widely shared and very long-term, while the costs of the line must be met upfront. Even before the City crash, attempts to fund giant infrastructure projects with private money often ran into trouble, especially in the context of rail, as the saga of Metronet showed. A more secure way to pay for the line would be to issue long-term government-backed bonds - though the Treasury would oppose the extra debt. As ever with Britain's railways, the problem is not the destination, but getting there.

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